Toronto's best gluten-free and vegan bakery — Bunner's makes genuinely excellent cinnamon buns, cupcakes, cookies, and brownies without gluten or animal products, achieving results that genuinely compete with conventional baking. The cinnamon bun is the benchmark: properly sized, properly sweet, properly sticky.
Neighbourhood: Bloor West / Annex · Address: 248 Dupont St, Toronto, ON (also Kensington Market location) · Hours: Wed–Sun 9am–5pm | Closed Mon–Tue · Price Range: $ · Phone: (647) 350-2975 · Editorial status: Not yet verified
Bunner's serves gluten-free and vegan cinnamon buns that actually taste satisfying — chewy, sticky, and not just an imitation. It's a spot where people with dietary restrictions won't feel like they're settling.
Plenty of Toronto bakeries claim gluten-free or vegan, but Bunner's recipes were developed from scratch to mimic the texture and flavour of classic treats. The cinnamon bun is a highlight, but even their cupcakes pass the taste-test with non-vegan, non-GF folks — that's rare. All baking is done in a 100% gluten-free facility, so there’s true safety for celiac customers.
Toronto's cinnamon bun bakeries are engaged in a form with firm community standards — the cinnamon bun (enriched yeast dough, brown sugar and cinnamon filling, cream cheese or vanilla glaze, rolled and sliced into rounds) is one of the most comfort-oriented baked goods in North American culture, and the versions that achieve cult status are distinguished by specific choices in every variable: dough enrichment level, filling sugar type, glaze to bun ratio, and serving temperature.
The classic cinnamon bun should be pull-apart soft at the center (fully proofed and baked through without becoming dense), with visible swirls of cinnamon-sugar filling that extend to the edges (not the watery pool of filling that under-enriched doughs produce), and a glaze applied while the bun is still warm (so it penetrates slightly rather than sitting as a surface coating). The cream cheese glaze (tangy, cutting through the sweetness) outperforms the plain icing glaze at a quality bakery.
The chocolate salted caramel cupcake represents the contemporary cupcake evolution — the combination of dark chocolate, sea salt, and caramel sauce reflects the salted caramel trend that has persisted in Toronto's dessert culture for fifteen years because the flavour combination genuinely works: the salt amplifies both the chocolate and the caramel, the caramel's bitterness complements the chocolate's, and the result is a richer, more complex dessert than either element alone.
The brownie is the quality reliability test at any bakery — a brownie should be fudgy (not cakey, which indicates wrong egg-to-fat ratio), with a shiny top crust (achieved by beating the eggs and sugar until the sugar partly dissolves before adding butter), and cut edges that show a moist, dense interior. A great brownie doesn't need additions; a poor brownie relies on nuts and chocolate chips to cover its dryness.
Pull-apart softness at the center (properly proofed, fully baked without drying), visible cinnamon-sugar swirl filling that extends to the edges, and cream cheese glaze applied warm so it penetrates the top layer rather than sitting as a surface coating. Serve warm from the oven for the best experience.
Cream cheese glaze has a tanginess that cuts through the cinnamon bun's sweetness, creating a more complex flavour. Plain icing adds pure sweetness without complexity. Most serious cinnamon bun bakeries use cream cheese glaze as the default; the choice reveals the baker's flavour sensibility.
The key indicator is texture — a great brownie is fudgy rather than cakey. The fudgy texture comes from a higher fat-to-flour ratio (more butter and chocolate, less flour) and careful underbaking. The top should be shiny (beaten eggs and sugar), the interior dense and moist without being gummy.
Yes — despite being a trend peak in 2010-2015, salted caramel has proven durable because the flavour combination (salt amplifying both caramel and chocolate flavours) genuinely works. Toronto's best dessert bakeries maintain salted caramel options because the customer demand is consistent.
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